Despite ridicule, Cruz resonates with many

Friday

Nov 1, 2013 at 12:01 AMNov 1, 2013 at 6:18 PM

Craig Holt / Guest column

Many words have been written about “kicking the can down the road” with respect to country’s budget deficit, expanding debt and how some U.S. House Republicans tried to tie spending cuts to partial approval of the Affordable Health Care Act (Obamacare).

A freshman U.S. Senator, Ted Cruz, R-Texas, filibustered Obamacare for 22 hours in September. Anyone who watched or listened — perhaps 1 in 20, if that many — understood he was speaking for working-class Americans.

Cruz’s marathon, with help from Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, began with the premise that “politicians in this body are not listening to the people.” Cruz offered the startling fact almost none of the members of Congress held town-hall meetings with their constituents during the six-week August recess because “… it is very easy when those of us who are in elected office who have been here for a long time to believe Washington knows better … and the rest of the country is better off – as they say of small children — seen but not heard.”

Cruz hammered President Obama and Congress, charging they’d exempted themselves from Obamacare while forcing the rest of us to join. However, although technically Congress isn’t exempt, it will get “waivers” as will McDonald’s, states who want to provide the same coverage, some HMOs, religious objectors, members of “health-care sharing ministries,” illegal aliens, are in jail, are “poor,” members of Indian tribes or are “suffering a ‘hardship.’” Meanwhile most individuals and businesses will be forced to become enrollees — or pay fines (aimed at the middle class). Obamacare already has had the unintended consequence of cutting working hours for laborers to less than the 30-hour minimum because companies then won’t be forced to provide health insurance — this in a stagnant economy with nearly 10-percent national unemployment, a record number of people collecting welfare and food via EBT (food-stamp) cards and 11-million resident aliens waiting to be added to Obamacare rolls.

“Americans understand this thing is not working,” Cruz said, “yet Washington is pretending not to know. … Instead we have politicians giving speeches how wonderful Obamacare is. At the same time, they go to the president and ask for an exemption … If Obamacare is so wonderful, why is it that the loudest advocates don’t want to be subject to it?”

Cruz called Obamacare “a train wreck” before it became clear — after the Obama administration spent $640 million to get AHCA’s computerized sign-up system ready — that the process spasmodically (and rarely) worked. AT&T has a better reputation for customer access, which is astonishing.

But did you hear any of these Cruz critiques? Well, no. The major networks showed the Texan reading five minutes of “Green Eggs and Ham” as a bedtime story to his children and ignored his main points of AHCA’s preferential treatment and inaccessibility. In lockstep, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, PBS, et al, portrayed Cruz as a fairy-tale-reading fruit loop living in a fairy-tale world.

But for about half the next news cycle, Cruz’s marathon drew TV news attention because his words resonated with people who knew he was onto something. The Texan became a rock star — for a moment — until Obamaphile editorialists writing for the Washington Post and New York Times and spooked-by-the-media GOP members began to label him a Kamikaze.

However, John Boehner, the House Speaker, didn’t trash Cruz. He was on a different track, trying to rally Congress for budget cuts. Boehner knows the elephant in the living room (debt crisis) looms again in January and can’t be ignored. The speaker understands Congress worsens the situation by kicking this issue down the road because the road dead ends eventually.

The Democrats may have won this purely political battle, but Cruz may have won a larger struggle. Texans know about losing a battle and winning a war. An 1836 dust-up at the Alamo is burned into every Texan’s consciousness, and they revere any Lone Star State resident who believes in a cause enough to stand on the ramparts against overwhelming odds.

Washington, D.C., probably hasn’t seen the last of Rafael Edward Cruz.